RAMS : From the Beginning, Knox Takes Care of Little Things

It was a mini-camp week full of tiny steps taken, deadwood forsaken and most of the sleepy traditions of this once-proud, recently cowed franchise irrevocably shaken.

It was the beginning of the beginning, and in so many tangible and invisible ways, the end of everything good, bad and bizarre that defined the Rams football club for the past decade.

For seven days last week, led by men most of them did not know before last Monday, the Rams went through Chuck Knox Orientation Week, feeling once and for all the hands-on touch of the man who now has almost total control of this franchise.

Get used to me, he was telling them. I will be around for a while.

Part of the charm of John Robinson was that things always felt open, relaxed, casual. He would talk about John Sununu, about new movies, about anything that interested him. Nothing was off limits, either in conversation or at Rams Park.

Part of his downfall was that things were too comfortable, and that meant in tough times, the team was not ready for the fight. Part of his downfall, too, was that he often talked so much he found himself misrepresenting the truth too often.

Knox is the opposite of comfortable, but he has an etched-in-stone reputation as a truth teller. If he doesn’t want to say, he will tell you he doesn’t want to say. He will not evade. He likes his players to keep the company line, too.

When he comes to a team, he brings with him a cocoon of no controversy. If there are problems, he will not deal with them in the newspaper. Only in the locker room.

It may be dull, but, for Knox, this is the way football games are won. Twenty years as a head coach in the NFL tells him so.

But two events, despite the cocoon, stand out--two little things that, measured against the high emotions, bittersweet memories and underlying power vacuum of the John Robinson Era, say everything:

The after-Math of bad drafts: John Math, purveyor of bizarre draft inclinations and player personnel director for the past 12 years, officially vacated the Rams Park premises for good Wednesday.

The question isn’t that he was pushed out the door--that much was expected since Knox was hired.

The real question is how in the world Math held his job so long. Robinson didn’t trust him and never wanted to talk to him, which makes it difficult to run drafts.

Executive Vice President John Shaw barely understood a mumbled word he said. Math produced a list of high Ram choices that brought a shiver to a franchise’s spine: Mike Schad, Donald Evans, Brian Smith . . . and the list goes on.

Not exactly a glorious resume.

Math hung on because the Rams didn’t know any better. The status quo held because Shaw and Robinson also distrusted each other, and neither wanted to make the first move to remove Math.

The three Johns stayed together because the Rams won for a while, enough to forgive a huge error here or there, and Owner Georgia Frontiere usually prefers to keep things as is.

So John Math, and the commitment to confusion, remained.

This was an organization that never had a long-range plan, that never knew exactly what to do once it acquired the gobs of draft possibilities in the Eric Dickerson trade, that drafted Gaston Green in 1988 though nobody in the room really wanted him.

Who had control? Who knew? Robinson didn’t want the responsibility and pressure of being the Rams’ end-all, be-all authority, and he probably did not mind having Math around to blame. Math didn’t have the talent to take control, and Shaw likes to remain in the shadows.

There was no direction in the draft process, no discipline, and ultimately, no reservoir of talent to draw from once top Ram veterans began retiring. There was only Math.

The ship sank because there wasn’t one captain ready to grab the wheel. If there was one, Math would have been gone long ago.

Once the Rams hired somebody who reveled in the authority, who demanded it, Math was the first one nudged off the boat, the official notice about three months late.

Bring him your huddled masses: The second moment was a lot less dramatic than the Math resignation, but had its own poignancy.

The Rams, not exactly the most disciplined football team on or off the field the past several years, actually practiced how to clap hands when they break a huddle. Yes, they did.

There was a sloppy hand-clap, and Knox jumped right into the middle of it, bellowed a few times, and the rest of the camp was as syncopated as you could have dreamed.

Under Robinson, the Rams were obsessed with the big things: the power running game, the deep pass, the pass rush. The little things--such as, perhaps, the center-quarterback snap--were taken for granted. With Knox, there is not a moment of his practice that is assumed.

“The huddle, it all begins right there,” Knox said last week. “Get that right. All of the little things, the pursuit drills, the cadence, the conditioning aspect at the end. . . . Everybody sees everybody else is doing it.”

If you slack off in the huddle at practice, you will slack off on third-and-three in the fourth quarter. If you leave the field early at practice, you will lose concentration during a key moment on Sunday.

If you doubt these things, just review some of last year’s Rams game tapes.

“I like to think that we are well-organized, and that we are a well-disciplined program when it comes to being on time, practicing hard and playing as hard as you can play,” Knox said.

“Discipline comes with lining up here and getting it done so that when plays are called in the ballgame you’re going to have a chance to be successful executing those things.”

The resignation of Math, the total restructuring of the draft hierarchy, the practice-obsession with hand-clapping and precise movement from drill-to-drill . . . that’s Knox adding discipline and consistency to his new team.

Without discipline and consistency, 3-13 is always two years around the corner, even if you were one game away from the Super Bowl.

“You know, discipline isn’t just the length of your hair or some dress code or something like that,” Knox said.

“Field discipline is get that call down and realize what your assignment and what your responsibility is, what your alignment is and having enough self-discipline to carry out the detail of that particular assignment that gives you a chance to be successful.

“That only comes through the little things you do out on this practice field. Because everybody does the big things. Everybody runs around, everybody does this and that.

“It’s the little things that the consistent winners do, and they do those things very, very well.”